


i'll spend my days (running after your heart)

by shineyma



Series: a lot like forever [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gift Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 01:44:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2529422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grant Ward wakes with the knowledge that someone entered his room while he slept.</p><p> </p><p>(Takes place in the same universe as <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2364431">no matter where we are</a>, but you shouldn't need to read that to understand this.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll spend my days (running after your heart)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SapphireBlueJiyuu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphireBlueJiyuu/gifts).



> First of all, thank you for all of the comments and kudos on chapter eighteen of _sometimes_! I promise I will respond to them tomorrow. I just wanted to get this up before tonight's episode.
> 
> Second, a brief explanation! A few months ago, the lovely, talented darling known as sapphireglyphs made [this stupendous edit](http://sapphireglyphs.tumblr.com/post/93544311794/before-you-fall-series-by-shineyma-w-x) for my _before you fall_ series, and I promised her a gift fic in return. She got the specifications to me a while ago, and this is the result. Her exact request will be listed in the end notes, to avoid spoilers.
> 
> Third, as noted in the summary, this technically takes place in the same universe as _no matter where we are (i will keep you in my heart)_ and my married in Vegas drabble, but you don't need to read those to understand this.
> 
> Fourth, title is from "Chasing You" by Bethel Music & Jenn Johnson.
> 
> I think that's it! Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review. Jan, darling, I hope you enjoy!

Grant wakes with the knowledge that someone has been in the room while he slept.

He’s careful not to tense, not to allow his breathing to falter or speed up, as he stretches out his senses to judge whether the intruder is still present.

He doesn’t hear anything. No movement. No breathing other than his own.

But he _knows_ that someone’s been here. Call it a sixth sense, or just very excellent training, whichever. He’s completely positive that someone entered the room while he slept.

That’s more than a little disturbing, for more than one reason. For one thing, whoever the intruder was, they might have left something behind—explosives, contact poison on the doorknobs…there are any number of possibilities.

For another thing, Grant’s not, by any stretch of the imagination, what one could call a deep sleeper. The fact that he slept through someone entering his room is worrying. Especially since he’s in a _hotel_ room, as opposed to a room on a secure base, so he should have slept even lighter than he usually does. Is it possible he was drugged?

He remembers clearly how he got here, however: after his last op went completely FUBAR—ending in three agents getting shot and Grant himself nearly thrown off the roof of a thirty-six story building—he sat through a six hour long debriefing, was given two days’ downtime, and then cleared out of the base ASAP before he could be dragged into another op. He took one of the fleet SUVs and drove to the nearest city, booked a room in a hotel (chosen completely at random), and fell into bed less than five minutes after receiving his key card.

There was no opportunity for anyone to drug him at any point of the process. Unless there was a slow-acting drug slipped in the water he drank at the debriefing, which is…not impossible, but certainly unlikely.

Well, he’s not going to get any information by lying here with his eyes closed. He listens for a moment longer, assuring himself that he really is alone in the room, then opens his eyes and sits up.

A glint of gold on the nightstand catches his eye, but he ignores it in favor of briefly scanning the room to double check that he’s alone and to ascertain that there are no immediately visible threats. Once he’s reassured himself of that, he turns his attention to the nightstand.

The gold that caught his eye is a pair of cufflinks—not the ones he was wearing yesterday—which are resting on top of a postcard. Frowning at the cheery letters spelling out ‘BERLIN’ over several images of local landmarks, he picks up the postcard and flips it over.

 _Our time apart is coming to an end_. _You have everything you need. Come find me!_ ♥

He stares at his wife’s handwriting for a long moment, surprised. Then he looks back at the cufflinks which, on closer inspection, turn out to be the ones Jemma bought him for their second anniversary.

Well, then. He laughs a little to himself and leans back against the headboard, weighing the cufflinks in one hand. If Jemma was the person who visited his room while he slept, it explains why he didn’t wake up. After nearly four years of marriage, he’s used to her presence. He doesn’t register her as a threat anymore, even when he’s asleep. It does, however, beg the question: what on Earth is Jemma doing _here_?

He returns his attention to the postcard, considering.

 _Come find me_.

Apparently, leading him on a chase.

So, she’s here in the city, and, judging by the message on the postcard, she’s left him clues to her location. He honestly would have preferred for her to just climb into bed with him, but…whatever. She’s worth a little (or, actually a lot) extra effort.

The first thing to determine is what else has changed since he passed out last night, after which he can analyze those changes and interpret them as clues. He starts to get out of bed, then pauses and amends his plan. The _first_ thing to do is find some ice for his ribs, which got a little dented in the scuffle yesterday. _Then_ he can start playing Jemma’s game.

He has a few chemically-activated ice packs in his duffle for just this situation, and he digs one out and activates it. He presses it to his ribs and starts to stand, then stops, attention caught by a flash of white in the duffle’s front pocket, which is slightly unzipped. He opens it all the way to find a key card inside: white, with the hotel’s logo emblazoned on one side in glossy green.

A quick glance across the room proves that his key card is still on the entry table where he dropped it when he got in last night. He only got the one card, so this must be Jemma’s. Meaning she’s staying in this hotel.

Good to know.

He puts the key card back into his duffle—the better to not get it mixed up with the one for this room—and stands, looking around the room again. What’s out of place?

His shirt.

The dress shirt he stripped out of and left on the ground last night is folded neatly on a chair by the window. He crosses the room to pick it up, and finds that its placement isn’t the only thing that’s changed. There’s a lipstick stain on the collar which was _definitely_ not there last night and, on closer inspection, a button is missing.

Okay. The lipstick thing he kind of gets—it’s a running joke between them, her habit of getting lipstick on the collar of every dress shirt he owns (which she defends as not at all her fault; apparently, if he weren’t so tall, she’d be able to kiss him on the lips like a normal person and the whole thing could be avoided)—but unless she’s suddenly developed some kind of button-centered kleptomania, he’s going to go out on a limb and guess that the missing button is a clue.

He searches the room for a while longer, but nothing else seems to be out of place. So, what does he have? A pair of cufflinks, a postcard, and a missing button. And a key card from this hotel. Jemma wouldn’t want to make this too difficult—she has to be nearly as impatient to see him as he is to see her, at this point—so, logically speaking, the ‘clues’ she left him must relate somehow to her room number.

But how?

He decides to start from the beginning. He sits down on the edge of the bed and picks up the cufflinks. They’re not the only cufflinks he owns. They’re not even the only cufflinks Jemma has ever bought him.

She buys him cufflinks for every anniversary. It started with their first anniversary, when she gave him a pair of gun-shaped cufflinks as a gag gift, saying they were too perfect to resist. Then, with their second, she gave him _these_ cufflinks—shaped like playing cards—as a reference to how they met. After that, it became tradition.

So why _these_ cufflinks? Why not the ones she got him for their first anniversary? Or their third?

It could be an indicator that there’s a two in her room number. Actually, it’s pretty much the only thing that comes to mind. Unless the cufflinks were just intended as proof that it’s really _her_ behind this, and not some incredibly creative enemy agent.

He sets the cufflinks aside for the moment in favor of the postcard. This time, he studies the front. Why Berlin? This is Vienna.

Actually, the postcard looks familiar. Not just the pictures of the city—he’s spent his fair share of time in Berlin—but the specific arrangement of them, as well as the multicolored font spelling out the word BERLIN.

It takes a few minutes, but he eventually remembers. He has a penthouse in Berlin, and he took Jemma there not long after they married. It was their first vacation together, back when they were still settling into marriage, before they knew whether they would even work out. Jemma bought a postcard just like this from a store in the airport, and sent it to her parents on their second day in the city.

So…assuming that the clues relate to room number, the postcard could mean one, for their first vacation, or two, for their second day in the city. He considers it for a long moment, then decides on one. After all, she _bought_ the postcard on their _first_ day in the city—also one.

The clue from his shirt seems obvious: the fourth button is the one missing. Four.

So: two from the cufflinks, one from the postcard, and four from the button. It would lead, then, that Jemma is in room 214. Except something about that strikes him as not quite right.

He and Jemma have stayed in a lot of hotels, over the course of their marriage. It’s not uncommon for him to only get a few days between assignments, so she often flies out to join him in whichever city he’s debriefed in, rather than wasting their precious hours waiting for him to travel to the Sandbox or the Hub. They’ll get a hotel room and hole up together until it’s time for him to report to the nearest base to receive his next assignment, at which point she returns to wherever she’s posted at the moment and he gets back to work.

In all of the many hotels they’ve stayed in, over the years, he can only think of one occasion that Jemma _didn’t_ request a room on one of the higher floors. Namely, that time he messed his knee up in Prague, and she requested a first floor room to spare him the stairs.

Jemma likes heights. She likes having top floor hotel rooms so she can look out the window and admire the cityscape, especially at night. And even Grant can admit that Vienna is a pretty impressive view.

No way she’d take a room on the second floor. This hotel, if Grant recalls correctly (from his very brief glance at the buttons in the elevator) has twenty-one floors. Which means—assuming that she _is_ on the top floor—that he’s missing a number.

He stands, leaving the now-warm ice pack on the bed, and makes another circuit of the room. He still can’t find anything else out of place, though. Maybe one of the numbers repeats? 2114? 2144? 2141?

No. There are too many possibilities. Jemma wouldn’t want to make it that complicated. She’s been away from him just as long as he’s been away from her, and—

Wait.

He returns to the bed and picks up the postcard. He noticed before, but didn’t give much thought to the fact, that _time apart_ and _end_ are underlined.

Could it be that simple?

She wouldn’t want to make it too difficult, so…yeah. Absolutely.

It’s been six weeks since the last time he saw her. Six. And _end_ is underlined as well, which tells him the positioning of that six—at the end of the number. Assuming he’s interpreting her clues correctly, Jemma is in room 2146.

He dresses quickly, pulling on the first shirt and pair of jeans he finds in his duffle, then grabs the key card for Jemma’s room. He booked this room for three days, so he doesn’t bother to gather up the rest of his things. He can come back for them later.

He remembers to snag the key card for this room on his way out the door, and slips it into his back pocket as he heads down the hall to the elevator. A glance at the buttons proves that he remembered correctly—there _are_ twenty-one floors, and he hits the button marked 21 a little more forcefully than is probably strictly necessary.

In his defense, it has been _way too long_ since he last _spoke_ to his wife, let alone saw her.

He manages to wait patiently as the elevator ascends, and somehow resists the urge to pry the doors open when the car reaches the twenty-first floor. Once the doors do open, he takes off down the hallway at a brisk pace. Following the helpful signs placed at regular intervals, it doesn’t take him long at all to locate the correct hallway.

2140…2142…2144…there. 2146.

Hoping very sincerely that he interpreted Jemma’s clues correctly—because at this point he’s honestly _desperate_ to see her—he inserts the key card in the appropriate slot and removes it quickly. The light on the door turns green, and he exhales as he pushes it open. _Finally_.

He’s barely entered the room when he’s hit by a very small, very _gorgeous_ missile in the form of his wife. The impact sends him stumbling back into the door—which causes it to slam the rest of the way closed—and produces a spike of pain in his ribs, but he hardly even notices. He’s far too busy kissing her to care.

The position they’re in, however, is needlessly uncomfortable. He gets his hands under her thighs and lifts her up, easing the strain on his neck, and then turns to pin her between his body and the door, freeing his hands for other pursuits.

She laughs, breathlessly, against his mouth. He’s not sure what’s so funny—possibly his extreme level of predictability (that was _not_ a new move)—but doesn’t care enough to stop kissing her and ask.

Eventually, however, he does have to stop kissing her, because they both need to breathe. Also, there are some questions that he _does_ care to ask—like, for instance, how long she’s going to be in town. This wasn’t a planned meeting— _he_ didn’t even know he’d be in Vienna until last night—which suggests she’s in town for a reason other than him, and there’s no telling how long that reason will last.

Before he can say anything, though, Jemma beams at him, totally derailing his train of thought. She frames his face with her hands, brushes her thumb under the scrape on his right cheek, and leans forward to kiss him again, briefly.

Then she leans back against the door and pins him with a playful frown.

“What took you so long?”

**Author's Note:**

> Here are the parameters Jan sent me:
> 
> • It must be shorter than 5,000 words.  
> • It must contain each of the 5 following items:  
> 1\. a key card  
> 2\. a missing button  
> 3\. an ice pack  
> 4\. a shirt with a lipstick stain on the collar  
> 5\. a postcard  
> • And finally, it cannot contain any dialogue except, “What took you so long?” which will be the final line in the entire piece.


End file.
